


Hidden in Plain Sight

by masi



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 03:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2135784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masi/pseuds/masi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bokuto finds something surprising in Akaashi’s planner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden in Plain Sight

**Author's Note:**

> Based loosely on a prompt I found on a writing website (which I can no longer find ☹) about one person reading another person’s diary and then confronting them about it. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

Bokuto isn’t a snoop. Unlike Kuroo, he doesn’t get off on finding out people’s secrets, on poking and prodding and making people uncomfortable. He is not a Provocation Expert. The only reason he is looking through Akaashi’s planner at the moment is because he was trying to get a pen from Akaashi’s desk for his morning class, and the planner was just there, and there was a cute owl on the cover, and so he opened it to find out if there were more cute owls inside.

There are more cute owls, and not just printed ones. Akaashi has actually drawn some. Akaashi’s not that good at drawing – the owls look like big lumpy circles with tufts – but they’re cute, and they have speech bubbles next to them. The owls are saying things like, “Oh-ho-hoot-hoot” and “Yahoo-oot!” and “Didja see that, Akaashi-hoot?!”

Bokuto laughs to himself as he flips through the planner. He always knew Akaashi had a sense of humor underneath that blank expression. His kouhai really is the best. Such a talented setter, so smart, so organized, so clean, such nice handwriting.

And so thoughtful too. Bokuto flips to September 20 in the planner. Sure enough, Akaashi has written in the little box: **Bokuto-san’s Birthday**. When Bokuto turns back a page, he finds that Akaashi has written: **Buy a present for Bokuto-san**.

Bokuto flips towards December to see what Akaashi is planning for his own birthday. Probably nothing. Akaashi still needs to work on learning how to have a good time. Bokuto isn’t too worried. Akaashi took a step in the right direction by deciding to attend the same university as him and also moving into the dorm room right below his own this year. Akaashi had passed the exams for TouDai, but he followed Bokuto here. A truly sweet, smart kouhai. He even gave Bokuto a spare key for occasions like these, where Akaashi is already in class and Bokuto needs to get something from his room. Bokuto will definitely teach him how to have a good time before he has to graduate and leave Akaashi behind again.

Bokuto accidentally flips too far in the planner and ends up on a page titled **Yearly Goals**. There is a short list on it. Just a quick peek, Bokuto tells himself. He’s really not a snoop. He just wants to make sure Akaashi isn’t planning to work himself to the bone. He starts reading.

Right underneath the title, Akaashi has written: **1\. Tell Bokuto-san that I love him.**

The planner drops out of Bokuto’s hands.

***

“You’re acting very strange, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi remarks during practice.

“I’m fine!” Bokuto replies.

He tries not to look at Akaashi. He needs to focus on practicing his spikes. He’s been thinking about Akaashi all day, wondering how long Akaashi has loved him, wondering why him of all people. 

He jumps up for a spike, accidentally jumps too high, and almost head-butts himself against the left pole of the volleyball net. Akaashi gets to him just in time, pushes him away so that he falls into the net instead. The net rips a little, and the coach starts yelling.

“Where would you be without that guy,” Kuroo remarks from the other side of the torn net. “You should be kissing him in gratitude.”

“Stop fucking around, Kuroo,” Bokuto says, a little alarmed. He wonders why Kuroo said the word “kissing.” Does Kuroo know about Akaashi’s crush? Does everyone know besides him?

When Bokuto turns to look at Akaashi, he sees something like a blush disappearing from Akaashi’s face. But it might not be a blush. Akaashi is probably just flushed from rescuing him. Bokuto is probably just seeing things because of what he read this morning. Maybe, he reasons with himself, he didn’t read anything this morning either. Maybe it was all a dream. A very confusing, but kind of pleasant, dream.

“Oops,” Kuroo says, smirking, “did I say too much again?”

Akaashi begins, “Kuroo-san, how is Tsuk-”

Kuroo coughs loudly, says, “Nice save, Akaashi! Bokuto, do something nice for him, will you? There aren’t that many guys out there who’d risk breaking their back to save a dumbass like you.”

Bokuto yells, “Why’s a dumbass calling me a dumbass?!”

After practice, after Kuroo has finally gone to his own dorm to jerk off or whatever he does there instead of studying like he should, Bokuto says, “Thanks, Akaashi.”

“Be more careful, Bokuto-san. You’re here on a volleyball scholarship.” Akaashi picks up both their bags. “You’ll be kicked out of the university if you can’t play anymore.”

Bokuto puts his arm around Akaashi’s shoulders. “You’re the best! Always thinking of me. Okay, I really have to do something nice for you. Not because that Kuroo-bastard said so or anything though.”

“You could start by carrying your own bag.”

“Oh! Right!” Bokuto pulls his bag off of Akaashi’s shoulder. 

He is relieved, mostly. The planner was just something his brain made up. Akaashi isn’t in love with him or anything. Akaashi is being his normal, cold self. Just last night Bokuto had asked him for help with spiking practice, just ten minutes of blocking, just ten Akaashi please, and Akaashi had said no, had gone to sit down on the floor with a bunch of towels and water bottles.

But it would’ve been kind of nice, Bokuto thinks, to try out a different kind of relationship. He kissed two people last year, a girl and a boy from his classes, and it was fun, but he’s been too busy with volleyball for a serious relationship with someone who doesn’t play. He wouldn’t mind trying with Akaashi, who’s with him almost 24/7 anyway. He likes Akaashi very much already, and Akaashi has pretty lips. Bokuto wonders what they would feel like, pressed against his own. He wonders what it would feel like to have Akaashi’s slender, toned thighs rubbing against his hips.

“Hey, Akaashi,” he says when they’re outside. It’s somehow easier, asking questions under the vast, dark sky. He folds his arms behind his head, looks up at the sky. “Do you have a planner with an owl on it?”

Akaashi stumbles for the first time Bokuto has seen, ever, right there on the sidewalk. Bokuto grabs his elbow. Butterflies suddenly take flight in his stomach.

Akaashi straightens up, adjusts the strap of his bag. “Yes,” he replies, tone even. “Why? Were you snooping around in my desk drawer?”

“No! I’m not a snoop! I just went to get a pen.”

There is a long silence between them. Bokuto considers telling Akaashi that he saw the yearly goals page. Best to clear the air. He wants to say that it’s okay, that he’s honored that Akaashi likes him. But he feels tongue-tied. The butterflies are trying to fly out of his throat.

Maybe it’s not something he should bring up, Bokuto thinks as he looks at the tense line of Akaashi’s back. Akaashi should be allowed to confess when he wants to and how he wants to. It’s only May, after all. Akaashi has seven more months left to accomplish his goal.

So when Akaashi frowns at him and asks, “What’s wrong with you now, Bokuto-san,” he assures Akaashi, “There’s nothing wrong! Actually, things are very right. And they’ll get righter.” 

***

When, after three days, Akaashi still hasn’t given any hints of being in love (and has also said “Bokuto-san, please try not to do anything embarrassing” when they were at some party), Bokuto decides that it will be a good idea to speed things along a bit. Their next volleyball tournament is just around the corner, and it would be nice if they were boyfriends by then. All that celebratory sex.

After some thinking, he comes up with a good idea. He will take Akaashi out for dinner after practice on Friday. They can bond over food. He will pay for the meal, like a good boyfriend should.

Akaashi agrees to dinner after some mild complaining about how many papers he has due on Monday. At the yakiniku restaurant, Bokuto refuses to let Akaashi touch the meat, starts grilling the meat by himself. “It’s my treat!” he says. “You just rest your hands.” He glances at the slender fingers once but looks away when he starts thinking about how they would feel wrapped around his dick. 

When he starts piling grilled beef onto a plate, Akaashi says, “I don’t feel like eating. That meat is too heavy for me.” 

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Bokuto protests.

“You can eat that by yourself.” Akaashi glances at the pound of beef in the bowl next to the grill. “And we’ve had this conversation before.”

Bokuto knows that Akaashi is a strange creature who loves vegetables so much that he actually voluntarily goes with Ushiwaka to farmers markets, but Akaashi does eat meat sometimes. Bokuto always brings him here hoping that it will be one of those times.

Halfway through the meal, Akaashi goes out to get himself a bowl of ramen, and the restaurant owner lets him bring it inside. While he’s eating, he lets Bokuto fish out the naruto in his bowl and eat them. And he only wrinkles his nose once when one of them falls out of Bokuto’s mouth and into the bowl. 

Bokuto sighs happily, thinking that maybe one day they will be able to do that thing where the couple takes opposite strands of a noodle into their mouths and slowly sucks towards the middle until their lips touch. Akaashi raises an eyebrow at him.

When it is time to pay, Bokuto rushes over to the cash register and then reaches into his pocket. His fingers close around some lint. He realizes, his heart sinking to his toes, that he has forgotten his wallet. 

He wants to punch himself. He turns around to apologize. Akaashi is already taking his own wallet out.

He watches Akaashi count out the bills, fingers precise, expression mild. Akaashi is never seriously angry with him: he only likes to say cutting things sometimes. It’s his way of joking. Akaashi is the best guy in Tokyo, maybe all of Japan. Bokuto can feel his heart swell with love for him.

“I’ll pay you back one day, Akaashi,” he says as they are walking back to their dormitory. “That’s a promise. You’ll see that your Bokuto-san always keeps his promises.”

“I’ll hold you to that promise,” Akaashi replies. “Please give me the money sooner rather than later.”

“I wasn’t talking about money! I was being meta-” Bokuto thinks hard, but he can’t remember the correct word. He continues, “You know what I mean! I meant in general. I owe you a lot, right? For all the times you’ve supported me. From back in Fukurodani. We’ve known each other for like a thousand years! We go a long way back, huh?”

“Yes, we do,” Akaashi agrees, sounding neither happy nor irritated.

Bokuto hopes for a moment that this amazing conversation will lead to a kiss, but they are at their dormitory already, and several guys and girls are hanging out in front of the building. Akaashi murmurs goodnight and turns towards his own room.

***

When another weekend rolls around and Akaashi still hasn’t confessed, Bokuto tries to think of another way to get their new relationship started. He stares out the windows of his dorm room for a while, searching for inspiration. When he sees a guy power-walking on the sidewalk below, waving both arms for exercise, he remembers that Akaashi is trying to improve his physical power, that he always stares very intently when setters like Oikawa are on the court. 

Bokuto puts on a pair of sweatpants and a jacket and then he hurries down the stairs to wake Akaashi up. They can go to gym together and do some boxing exercises.

Akaashi is still sleeping, covers pulled over his head, but Bokuto drags him out of bed easily, tries not to blush about how warm Akaashi’s skin feels against his hands, stops himself from kissing Akaashi’s bleary eyes, and pulls him out the door. 

“What, now?” Akaashi protests, stumbling a little, as Bokuto explains what they’re about to do. “I haven’t done my morning run yet.”

“We’ll do that first then, no problem!” Bokuto kneels down to push Akaashi’s feet into his sneakers.

Akaashi grasps Bokuto’s hair, suddenly, a little too hard, and Bokuto looks up, surprised.

“Sorry,” Akaashi says, dropping his hand back to his side. He fixes his shoes. “You didn’t have to do that. I can put my shoes on by myself.”

“It’s okay! What are friends for?” Bokuto stands up, brushes his hands off. “Let’s go!”

They go the nearest public park because it’s too nice out to be running indoors on a treadmill. Akaashi tries to keep up with him for the first five minutes, but he seems more tired than usual this morning. Bokuto has no choice but to leave him behind after a while.

Bokuto circles the whole park twice, and then he returns to the main gate to wait for Akaashi. When Akaashi finally makes it back, about ten whole minutes later, Bokuto feels bad. Akaashi is flushed an unhealthy red, and sweat is rolling off of his face, dripping into his T-shirt.

“Hey, don’t overdo it!” Bokuto says, clapping him on the back. “Pace yourself.”

Akaashi pushes his sweaty hair away from his forehead. He is scowling as he tries to catch his breath.

“You weren’t having fun?” Bokuto asks.

“No.”

“Aww.” Bokuto points to the couple jogging by the pond. The guy and girl are holding hands as they jog. They’re wearing matching headbands. “Look at them! They’re having fun.”

“I wonder why,” Akaashi says.

He looks very irritated. Bokuto knows that he has to proceed carefully and smartly now. He has to try to understand the situation and not just say whatever comes to mind. He doesn’t like to upset Akaashi. Akaashi isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine on the best of days, but he becomes mean and rude when he’s angry, and worse, so tightly wound up that Bokuto feels like a simple touch will be enough to make him explode. And it would be an internal explosion, the worst kind. He just wants Akaashi to be happy.

Maybe, Bokuto thinks as he looks at the couple, Akaashi wanted to jog while holding hands too. 

Slowly, Bokuto holds out his hand, asks, “Want to go for a jog?”

Akaashi flushes a deep red, glares at him with a scary amount of suspicion, and then says, “I’m leaving.” He begins walking towards the street. “I have to finish a paper.”

Bokuto lets him go. He wonders when that moment will come, when things will finally click into place, when it will be fun to spend time with Akaashi again. It’s not something he can practice for, like he had with his Straight Spike. He wishes he could.

***

During practice on Monday, Akaashi pairs off with Kuroo not only for stretching exercises but also for blocking practice. And, even worse, Akaashi keeps talking to Kuroo. Amazing how much his mouth can move when he is with Kuroo. He barely spoke two words to Bokuto all weekend, even though Bokuto had offered to do all of Akaashi’s chores for him as a peace offering and also brought him coffee, which had spilled on Akaashi’s floor, true, but Bokuto had cleaned it up.

Bokuto wants to stomp over to them and tell Kuroo to back off his kouhai, but he has no right. It’s not Kuroo’s fault. It’s his own fault for not being cool enough to make Akaashi come running to him with a love confession. Maybe Akaashi has only written “Tell Bokuto-san that I love him” as a tentative goal, one that he might complete and might not depending on how Bokuto behaves. Who would want to date someone as dumb and untalented as Bokuto Koutarou anyway. Even on the university court he’s still only the fifth best Wing Spiker, and the gap between him and that Ushiwaka grows daily, especially now that Mr. What-Is-Fun has become a team player, a team that has Oikawa on it.

After practice, Bokuto drags himself back to his dorm and throws himself onto his bed. He scrolls through his phone until he finds the song “In the End,” uploaded by Kuroo after their last defeat to Ushiwaka and Oikawa, and pushes play. He lies there for a while, staring up at the water-stains on the ceiling, listening to the voices filled with angry defeat yelling in English, words that he doesn’t really understand but can feel in the blood running through his veins. 

The song that comes on after is more upbeat, probably uploaded by Akaashi, who likes to listen to J-Pop songs with a blank face while doing his homework. Bokuto is about to turn it off, but the song is really catchy. 

He feels a little better after the song ends. Akaashi deserves someone good, yes, but that only means that he, Bokuto, has to become that good person. There’s no reason he should give Akaashi up. Akaashi does seem to like him from time to time.

Bokuto sits up. He has two choices now: do nothing about his love for Akaashi because he hasn’t had any success lately, or do something about it.

Volleyball has taught him that he should always “do something about it” when he’s stuck. There’s no point in worrying about whether or not it will work, or what will happen in the future. So Bokuto straightens his shoulders, attempts to brush his hair, does not get sad when his comb gets temporarily lost in his hair, and then marches out the door.

He almost trips over Akaashi.

“What the fuck?!” Bokuto exclaims, clutching his heart with one hand and holding onto the wall with the other. “Akaashi?! What are you doing here?!”

Akaashi is sitting just to the left of the door, cross-legged, bag in his lap. He looks like he is ready to sit there for the rest of the night. He says, tilting his chin up to look at Bokuto, “What does it look like? I was waiting for you, Bokuto-san.”

“Waiting for me to do what?!”

“Finish sulking, of course.”

“Why are you so mean to me, Akaashi?” Bokuto protests, putting his hands on his hips.

Akaashi smiles up at him, such a gentle smile.

Bokuto blurts out, “Okay, fine, I’ll just tell you! I read your planner, okay?! And it’s cool, okay. It’s more than cool! I’m happy! About what you wrote.”

The smile completely drops off of Akaashi’s face. Now he looks terrifying. Bokuto turns around, backs away, covers his own face so that he doesn’t have to look at Akaashi. 

He says through his fingers, “I’m sorry, Akaashi! I should’ve just looked at the owls.”

“You’re making no sense at all, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says, sounding very cold and calm.

Bokuto feels a shift in the air. He uncovers his face to see Akaashi standing up. Despite the controlled tone, Akaashi looks miserable. Bokuto feels bad.

“Hey,” he says, grasping Akaashi’s shoulder. “Didn’t you hear me when I said that it was cool? I’m glad you like me! I hope you still like me. I love you too, Akaashi.”

Akaashi jerks back, like Bokuto has burned him or something. His mouth is hanging open. Bokuto gently pulls him into the room, closes the door. He isn’t sure how to make things right, but he knows that he really wants to kiss Akashi’s confusion and hurt away. 

When Bokuto leans forward to kiss Akaashi, however, Akaashi puts a hand over Bokuto’s mouth.

“Are you sure, Bokuto-san?” Akaashi asks.

“’Course I am!” Bokuto replies into Akaashi’s palm.

Akaashi chews the corner of his lip a little. He looks nervous for the first time ever. Bokuto grasps Akaashi’s shoulders to make him feel more comfortable.

“Of course I’m sure,” Bokuto repeats. “Of course I am. Can I … uh, may I, kiss you now? Please? I’ve been thinking about it since I read your planner.”

“You know,” Akaashi says, softly, almost like he’s talking to himself, “I think I’ve been leaving my planner there hoping you would read it and confront me about it.” He looks away, at some point in the distance. “How cowardly. And even after … I’ve been unkind to you.” He looks at Bokuto again. “I apologize. Guess you’re not the only uncool one here.”

“It’s all good,” Bokuto assures him. It makes Bokuto feel more at ease, knowing that his calm, collected Akaashi has moments where he is awkward and unsure too. They’re both in this together, like they’ve always been with everything. 

Bokuto says, “I’m just glad that I read it.”

Akaashi flushes a pretty pink. When he cups Bokuto’s face in his hands, Bokuto leans down and kisses him. 

Akaashi’s mouth fits perfectly against his own, just like Bokuto had hoped. And when Akaashi puts his arms around Bokuto’s waist, hugs him close, Bokuto feels that he has reached it, that moment he was waiting for in this relationship. It feels just as great as his first successful Straight Spike did, no, even better, a thousand times sweeter. He squeezes Akaashi back and then kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Click [here](http://sailoranime.tumblr.com/post/105570428125/little-bokuto-owls-based-off-of-masis-fanfic) to see three absolutely adorable Bokuto owls (thank you, sailoranime!).


End file.
